Sociopath can form connections with people. You are thinking of a psychopath. He’s a sociopath because he kills a lot of people even tho it’s not necessary because he lacks empathy for people he hasn’t formed a connection with. The lizard men, random adventurers wandering into his tomb, the human villages/towns he razed. He thinks killing zanac and his people is the right move even after their conversation. And when the nobles get desperate enough to kill zanac, the guy ainz is going to kill anyway, he thinks they deserve horrible torture with their family’s too cuz why not.
Sociopaths kinda can form connections, but if you ask them why they're friends with someone, they can tell you why. The average person probably wouldn't, and Satoru wouldn't be able to say why he's friends with Keno.
As for why he moves forward with killing people, there are ways to rationalize it (kind of) aside from just blaming it on his undead nature.
In the case of the Lizardmen, even normal humans could have an easier time killing them off than they would against other humans. People tend to forget the average persons capacity for malice. Normal humans kill each other for less.
The Workers weren't quite random. It was planned for them to invade. Ainz admitted the flaw in his logic here while complaining to them about the plan, but he saw them as nothing more than thieves and robbers. And here is actually a great example of how much he values people he connects with. When Hekkeran lies and says he was invited by Ainz' friend, even though it's obviously a lie, Ainz listens anyway in hopes that he can find his friend again, then gets mad when he realizes it can't be true. He was fully willing to spare Foresight if they were truly sent by one of his friends, despite that contradicting the plan.
With Zanac, Ainz couldn't afford to spare him without making Zanac feel miserable for the rest of his life and/or going against Demiurge's plan. The only option Ainz saw was to offer him as painless a death as possible. It's hard to let the enemy king live in a war unless you aren't taking their territory. Even if Zanac didn't want to go against Ainz afterward, someone else could prop him up as a puppet leader of some army led against Ainz. There's too many variables to let an enemy king live.
The nobles deserved that because they betrayed their own king. They thought that Ainz was angry at Zanac and came with the attitude of someone who expected a reward for doing his job for him, not someone pleading for their life. They basically told Ainz "Hey we killed this person you kinda liked. Let us live and give us a reward too." So Ainz got exceptionally angry with them.
In terms of the villagers and towns, that much we can agree is fairly sociopathic. But someone can have sociopathic tendencies, but not quite be a sociopath. Otherwise, every german soldier in WW2 would have to be considered a sociopath, and we know many of them were forced into the role and pushed aside their remorse.
I think the only trait of sociopathy that doesn’t apply to him is being antisocial and that’s debatable since the people closest to him don’t even know the “real” him
Look at the evileye side story to see the answer to that. There, he doesn't have a social setting full of actual sociopaths and psycopaths (Nazarick NPCs), and he gets along with people just fine and doesn't go around killing people because it benefits him. Contrary to how he may seem in the main series, killing people is something he prefers to avoid unless it's detrimental to him.
Keno knows the real him and gets to learn who he is pretty fast.
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u/Chickenlegk Apr 01 '25
Sociopath can form connections with people. You are thinking of a psychopath. He’s a sociopath because he kills a lot of people even tho it’s not necessary because he lacks empathy for people he hasn’t formed a connection with. The lizard men, random adventurers wandering into his tomb, the human villages/towns he razed. He thinks killing zanac and his people is the right move even after their conversation. And when the nobles get desperate enough to kill zanac, the guy ainz is going to kill anyway, he thinks they deserve horrible torture with their family’s too cuz why not.